CAER: Chester Amphitheatre Environs Research Project

Day 12 of the dig was certainly the hottest so far (a pinkening 24℃) and possibly the most intriguing day. Numerous finds from the Roman road today have begun to tell a part of the story of life in Roman Chester.   Several Roman iron nails were found within the context of the Roman road one of them may have been rather enthusiastically mattocked through, along with a melon bead and a lead spindle whorl.  Across the site, preparations were made to dig two sections through a possible ditch, which also recovered some large cattle bones. A black tessera was also recovered, could there possibly be a villa nearby? Samian ware and Black-Burnished ware pottery sherds were also frequent finds from the baked concrete like earth, which was subsequently dumped over the EDGE of the spoil heap upon its removal. The day was intersected by the Bone Lab a crash course in the bones and bits of beasts and how to draw and identify our muddy pieces of past creatures by the lovely Ian, a ...

Day six of the excavation at Grosvenor park at trench VIII has marked the end of a week that was  riddled with typical British weather and some interesting finds. Everyone loves a Friday, everyone has that bit extra motivation to carry on working because they can see the start of that weekend, and the end of hard work throughout the week.  Because of that hard work in trench VIII more progress has been made. Mainly on the eastern side of the trench, students are still working hard taking away the last bits of the backfill from last year’s dig but we are now begining to enter a new context (archaeological layer), with new finds - mainly bits of animal bone fragments. Whereas on the westerly end of trench VIII some very beautiful floor tiles have been uncovered from the soil, dating to the post medieval period. Some of them having very well-preserved designs still on them, an example of that being a Griffin. Adam.

Today saw more periodic drenching of the team.  Whilst some escaped to the relative dry of the finds processing room, others battled it out as long as they could on site. Here's hoping our Open Day on Tuesday is drier than this! Adam Today was focused around post-excavation processes for finds, because archaeology does not end after an artefact is recovered. The first stage  is to wash the finds; this is a labor of love as it requires a delicate touch and patience, but only certain finds can be washed such as bone and pottery as other materials, for example iron, can be destroyed if washed. After the finds are washed and dried it's on to the next stage in the process, which for us is to mark the finds with the relevant site code so that if misplaced they can be returned to their proper place. This is a tricky and delicate endeavor that requires using waterproof ink, a fountain pen and a steady hand. Alas, I lack the latter so this was a struggle for me at first, but...

After a bit of a slow start quite a large assemblage of finds has been retrieved over the last 3 and a half weeks and predictably this week the excavation of part of a ditch running north/south across the site is producing bags and bags of animal bone and pottery. Last year’s backfill produced an amazing range of finds: clay tobacco pipes, lead shot, fragments of Samian pottery, as well as Westerwald stoneware and post-medieval Spanish olive jar and a variety of other post-medieval wares, including slipware dish fragments, blackware vessels and pieces of Cistercian ware cups. It’s interesting to see what ended up on last year’s spoil heap rather than in finds trays but it is easy to miss fragments when it’s wet and muddy. Once the backfill had been removed the quantity of clay tobacco pipes found fell considerably and stopped completely after the last of the 17th century demolition deposits were removed from the south side of the trench. It looks as if we are firmly in the 16th ce...

Julie, our finds expert, hghlights some of the great artefacts uncovered so far: A quick update on finds. We’re continuing to find large amounts of building materials: roof slates, ceramic crested ridge tiles in white and red fabrics, mortar, white wall plaster, brick, apparently structural ironwork and floor tiles. Most of the floor tiles are medieval with two colour or line impressed designs but a few fragments are from large square tiles which are possibly late 15 th or early 16 th in date. These tiles have two types of design: one is   line impressed with floral (daisy like) designs similar to those found at the 25 Bridge St excavations in 2001, the other   has unglazed relief moulding   and is similar to tiles found associated with the redesign of the west entrance of Chester Cathedral in the early Tudor period. Some of the medieval designs are types that have appeared in previous seasons a griffin and the remains of this stylised lion’s head (14 th centur...